“I am engaged in a great work, so I can’t come. Why should I stop working to come and meet with you?” Nehemiah 6:3b (NLT)
Nehemiah is a Bible book that can teach us much about true leadership. Nehemiah was a cupbearer to King Artaxerxes, and one day
he heard how things were not looking good back in Jerusalem, the home he and his people had been taken from. The city walls had been torn down, the gates burned and the people were in disgrace. He sat down and wept and mourned for his people while fasting and praying to God for days.
God gave Nehemiah a burden and a purpose: to go back to Jerusalem to rebuild the walls. Amazingly, King Artaxerxes, by God’s will,
gave Nehemiah permission to return to Jerusalem to begin this project. Yet, it wasn’t without discouragement. Neighbors tried to stop the rebuilding by laughing, mocking, intimidating, and even hiring a false prophet to try to discredit Nehemiah.
Does this sound familiar? Doesn’t it seem like when we are wanting to do God’s will, our enemy Satan wants to discourage, intimidate,
distract, mock, and discredit us in all kinds of ways? Nehemiah’s story doesn’t end there, and it doesn’t with us, either. In 52 days, Nehemiah and his team finished the wall! And God is not finished with us. God wants to do His will through us, and we must do it!
Despite our enemy’s antics, you can be sure that, as He was there for Nehemiah, He will be there for you. Of course, Nehemiah didn’t
like all the trouble, but it made him all the more determined to get the job done. So let us not stop the work that God has called us to do. As Nehemiah said, we can also say, “They (the enemies) realized this work had been done with the help of our God” (Nehemiah 6:16b, NLT).
– Myrna Kopf
Council Fire is a collaboration with Intertribal Life Ministries and Native Evangelical Fellowship of Canada.
The Council Fire Daily Devotional Book Set is available on the Intertribal Life Ministries website.
Learn more about Council Fire at councilfire365.org